Trader Joe’s Blondie Bar Baking Mix, reviewed

Trader Joe’s has put out quite a few baking mixes over the years, mixes with all natural ingredients and a very low price tag that makes them pretty appealing, even for “scratch” bakers. I’ve had mixed results from a few mixes, and very good results from others, and that is enough to keep me curious when I see that they’ve added a new product to their lineup.

Trader Joe’s Blondie Bar Baking Mix is a mix for blondies – bar cookies that have a flavor similar to a chocolate chip cookie and a chewy texture that is more like that of a brownie. The ingredient list reads like something you’d make at home: flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, molasses, oil and chocolate chips. Of course, you add in your own butter and egg to the mix to moisten it before baking. The finished blondies look a lot like the bars you’d make from scratch, although they just a bit cakier than I usually make my blondies. They have a nice brown sugar cookie flavor and plenty of chocolate chips. The only changes that I would make would be to add a splash of vanilla in with the rest of the ingredients to round out the flavors a bit. It doesn’t seem like there are too many mixes for blondies out there, so I like the fact that this mix offers something a little different. It’s also nice that the box includes suggestions for a few other mix-ins to change this mix up and make it easy to put twists on it if it becomes a regular feature in your baking.

I made the blondies recently because I am somewhat of a fan of Trader Joe’s items, but to be honest, I really wasn’t a huge fan of this particular mix. I found the chocolate way too sweet and the overall consistency of the brownie to be too crunchy or dense or something. I just didn’t like it. Sorry! I really wanted to like it because I’d never had blondies before and was looking forward to adding a new item to my baking repetoire, but I won’t be buying this particular mix again. I would recommend adding nuts to cut the chocolate, that might help balance the flavors a bit.

I love my trader joes because they always have samples in the back of the store! One day it was these blondies bars… but instead of the WHOLE STICK of butter and egg, the lady baking them substituted a can of Northern Beans (white beans you can find there… or anywhere) for those ingredients. What you do is rinse the beans (in the can) keep the beans in the can, fill it with water and puree that mixture in a blender, add to the blondies mix (with nothing else… unless you want to add some vanilla, nuts, etc. like mentioned above) and bake… it takes away the cholestrol and fat that the butter would add and adds protein! You can barely tell a difference (I fed it to my boyfriend and friends’ kids who LOVED them and couldn’t tell a difference).. GREAT idea for making this recipe a little more “healthy” — you can also substitute this for most other recipes, too!